Today, we begin the process of, what we hope to be, the 2K restoration on CURTAINS. We're the first people to crack open these cans since 1983. Fingers crossed.

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Synapse Films said:

Today is the kind of day I both loath and love about this business. We have, in our hands, the only existing vault materials for a horror film that many love and have wanted for years to be done right on home video. I'm assigned to the task. The excitement is overwhelming just to SEE the film and find out what is in the cans. The "loath" part is usually the bad news where we find out it was improperly stored, torn, shredded, faded or whatever... But, we'll find out. Synapse will MAKE THIS WORK! 2K scan work commence!

What happened to the campaign Shout Factory started on having fans sign a petition for Echo Bridge to license this and Prom Night to Scream Factory? Didnt Cliff at Scream say Echo bridge refuse to license the titles out to sCream despite them trying endlessly?

This will be amazing! It would be made even more perfect with the original ending and other scenes from the first cut of the film.

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Justin, your dreams are certainly our dreams but, right now, all signs point to every bit of that stuff being thrown out and destroyed because of vault space/fees some years ago. We have the paperwork that shows it was ordered destroyed... including the original work print of the film that was 105 minutes and on two 3/4" U-MATIC tapes that some genius decided wasn't necessary to keep. We're remaining hopeful, however, that this material exists somewhere. But, I wouldn't hold my breath.

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Synapse Films said:

Does anyone have a trailer, radio or TV spots?

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We are in search of trailers, etc. The vault may have done stuff, but I want to make sure we can successfully do a 2K transfer on this baby first.

What happened to the campaign Shout Factory started on having fans sign a petition for Echo Bridge to license this and Prom Night to Scream Factory? Didnt Cliff at Scream say Echo bridge refuse to license the titles out to sCream despite them trying endlessly?

Or did Scream succeeded and hired Don May to do the restoration?

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I don't think Shout Factory ever had anything to do with that petition. Shout mentioned that they tried to get Curtains and Prom Night, then some fan took it upon themselves to start a petition.

Everyone keeps saying that Curtains was shot in open matte, well I would have to say that I don't think that this is correct. If you look at Echo Bridges DVD for example, the entire movie is 4:3 - BUT the ice-skating scene is actually stretched to 4:3, if you change the aspect ratio on your tv you will see that this is actually supposed to be 16:9 but before and after this particular scene 4:3 is clearly the correct aspect ratio.

I have absolutely no idea why this is but I've checked it over and over and I am 100% positive that this particular scene was stretched from 16:9 which leads me to believe that when whoever made this print that echo bridge used cropped this movie to 4:3 they realized that if they cropped this scene it would cut away important information (for example the murder weapon) and there was no way to cut it to make it look good so they just decided to stretch the picture instead. This is just a theory but I REALLY do not believe that this was shot in open matte.

"the film was shot open matte, so the film is labelled that way because it wasn't shot with anamorphic lenses. This film was clearly shot to be projected at a standard 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Selected sequences in the IP are actually hard matted on the element in 1.85:1... not uncommon at all, but it makes me wonder if the hard matted sequences may be from the previous shot portions of the film from the other director."

which means that I was actually right about what I said before that it was stretched to 4:3.

I saw CURTAINS at an all-night horrorthon last year. Definitely an odd one, as many of the killings were below the standards set by the best slasher films, and yet in many other respects - acting and writing especially - it was way too good to be a slasher flick. And yet the movie stuck with me for weeks and weeks afterwards so it's easy to understand the excitement. I may very well even pre-order this one, and I haven't bought many DVDs or Blus at all lately.

I guess it's fair to say Synapse wont know for sure whether a bd is even fully possible? Or have the elements been examined already?

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So far, so good, Ben. The element needs a bit of massaging, but I think it's good enough to warrant a transfer and restoration at this point. It's certainly not perfect, and the low budget shows in the film stock and printing, but what I'm seeing tonight (right now, actually) is good. We're proceeding with a 2K transfer.